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Projects

The first line of code typed, the first paragraph of an essay or a story authored, or the first scribble on a fresh sheet of paper starts defining the product; it destroys the superposition of the possible things the project may become. With each stroke of the key or pen, thousands upon thousands of outcomes are pruned away.

I am destroying infinite works that could have been to create just one. Is this one better than those which will never be? Does it deserve its existence more than its brothers do?

So I have finally gotten some old projects off of my archival hard drive, and on it I had an earlier draft of a story I had posted a few months ago. The original version is a little rougher but has much better pacing, and the friends I have shown it prefer it to my revision. I had gotten a little wordy with my redo for the sake of clarity. Since all of my other projects are currently way behind schedule, and nothing fruitful will be yielded from them to present to you, I will post the original. Let me know which you like better.

The aspirin tablets rattled loudly as he fumbled open the child proof cap in the dark. “God damn useless overly-complicated piece of plastic, why… won’t… you… fucking… OPEN!” he screamed. The cap sailed across the room amidst the tinkling of the precious medication raining on the cold linoleum.

It took all his energy to remain standing as wave after wave of pain cut through his skull. He quickly chocked down the promise of relief before collapsing to the floor as if his strings had been suddenly severed. The doctor had told him it was dangerous, that he was too old for the implant, that the stress could kill him.

But he needed it. He couldn’t keep up with them. The kids at the office, they could…

Another wave of pain, so intense he could feel it in his teeth. Lightning ricocheted around his skull. He slowly crawled, his sporadically convulsing muscles only slightly more effective than gelatin, towards the phone. Lacking the strength to reach it, he feebly shook the table where it perched. After an agonizing eternity the small plastic device clattered to the floor. He dialed 9…1…

While working on today’s comic, I was inspired to write up this little story ( It has nothing to do with my comic). It is very stylized, so please let me know what you think (and don’t be afraid to be brutaly honest, just make sure your crtiscism is the helpful sort).

Type. Type. Pain!

It crackled across his skull like a miniature lightening storm and raced down his spine while his body convulsed.His laptop crashed to the floor, shattering, as he bolted to the bathroom, instinctually seeking any relief he could find.His vision blurred.

The pain was everywhere.

He tore open the medicine cabinet and tried to scan the bottles quickly before his eyes failed him completely.His hands were getting numb… everything felt heavy.There!

Fireworks filled his vision. His ears rang.

The aspirin tablets rattled loudly while he fumbled open the child proof cap in the dark. “Damn useless overly-complicated piece of plastic! Why… won’t… you… OPEN!” he screamed as the cap sailed across the room amidst the tinkling of the precious medication raining on the cold linoleum.

It took all his energy to remain standing as wave after wave of pain cut through his skull. He quickly chocked down the dim promise of relief and hobbled to the bedroom, hardly making it past the threshold before suddenly collapsing as if he was a puppet whose strings had been violently severed. “Why… Why didn’t Igo here first…”he silently lamented, unable to speak.

The doctor had told him it was dangerous, that he was too old for the implant, that the stress to his system would be too much. But he needed it. He couldn’t keep up with them. The brats at the office, they… they could…

Another wave of pain, so intense he could feel it in his teeth. Lightning ricocheted around his skull. He slowly crawled, his sporadically convulsing muscles only slightly more effective than gelatin, towards the phone. Lacking the strength to reach it, he feebly pawed the table where it perched.

“I’m not going to make it…”

…the smell of burnt toast filled his nose…

After an agonizing eternal moment the phone tumbled to the floor.With the very last bit of strength his failing body could muster he dialed… 9…1… he tasted blood… 1..

We completed the room today and awesomeness permeates throughout every board! Seating fills the room, so we can cram a few dozen people in there comfortably [enough]. It feels a lot like a club house you’d make as a kid, but less likely to collapse on you (and your parents won’t tear it down because you “borrowed” the dining room chairs). Not much else to say really… I hope you enjoyed this series!

I actually used a real camera and not my phone, so these pictures turned out pretty well.

Wow, the renovations of that sketchy room have really taken off! I was unable to give Davin a hand yesterday, but he was able to get all of the major walls up, and the rest of the ceiling installed. Today we disassembled my ball pit, transported it to his house, and repurposed the wood to make an entry way to the lounge/ball pit, and a nifty little seating nook. Walling the nook was interesting… in a horrible way. I had to spend way too much time in a cramped, dark gap to fasten the rear wall on, while trying to not get Tetanus from the decaying ceiling. The work is going to be worth it in the end! I had to leave early to get some work done, so even more has likely been completed. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to head over tomorrow to help finish it up.

I hope you enjoyed that. Here are a few links in case you didn’t. (or did, but want to see some other cool things.)

I <3 Legos. They have been a part of my life ever since I was old enough to not confuse them for candy. I've amassed a respectably sized collection over the years and still dabble in Lego Engineering now and then. My latest foray into the land of Lego resulted in a very peculiar airship that folds into more-or-less a box.

If that interests you, you can see more of this and other creations of mine here. Enjoy!
-Ian

Well today was interesting! I have been itching to work on something real lately, luckily Davin was beginning work to transform a nasty storage area under his stairs into a lounge/ball pit. Quite a job! He had already gotten it as clean as it was going to get and removed a lot of rotted drywall and I am very glad I missed that part.

Work is moving along at a decent pace. Today we were able to get the carpet and part of the ceiling in; Tomorrow we are hoping to get enough of it finished to put the couch in. Then we’ll put in the rest of the walls, lights, and of course the balls. That’s all for now, enjoy these pictures of our work day.

Thanks for Reading! Check back again soon for more updates.

-Ian

P.S. Speaking of construction, here are some amazing unique materials:

Ok, so I am trying to keep up the momentum and get as much stuff fixed/posted on this site before life catches up with me. I finally got the Musical Curves applet Brett Dutro and I wrote online. You can find that here. Also, I wrote a fairly lengthy tutorial post on working with sound in Flash. I tried some new and time consuming formatting with it, and for the most part I like it. I need to modify the look of the code viewer I found so it clashes with the background less, but I think it is ok for now. (If you have any suggestions for a better code viewer with automatic syntax highlighting, let me know.) You can find that page here. I am not going to post tutorials on any sort of regular basis, they will get up there as I am motivated to write them.

Oh, I saw the strangest banner ad on Facebook today for ancestry.com, so I saved a copy of it to post here. I know what they were trying to do with the banner, but it really just came off as a creepy man trying to kiss a baby.

On a more serious note, the site itself is great if you want to learn more about your genealogy, and its World Archives Project is rather ambitious, and a very good use of crowdsourcing(everyone loves buzzwords).

Crowdsourcing, if you haven’t heard of it, is the act of dividing a task that is either too large for an in-house team to complete, or too complex for a computer to churn through up and disseminating it to a large number people, usually via the Internet. It is essentially a wetware version of cloud computing. Kinda cool, right? Another interesting crowdsourcing site is Innocentive; a crowdsourced R&D company specializing in sciences and engineering. They post problems from companies, and the crowd responds with a solution. If the solution is considered appropriate, the supplier gets a fairly hefty reward.

Well that is more or less all I have for today. Before I go here are a couple interesting links. (This is going to become a regular thing I think, so even if my posts aren’t interesting you will have somewhere interesting to go.)

I have been swamped by life, and I have been uninspired to do more coding… so the game has kinda stalled. Well, my mind has kept going, so I have decided to start writing out an idea I have for a sci-fi comic that I have been mulling about in my head. I am only in the perliminary research and brainstorming stages, but I am really excited about some of the material I have generated. If things keep going well with it, I should have finished pages by the end of the summer that I can start posting online!

Sci-fi is fun. I come up with fantastical ideas, and then brainstorm ways to ground them in real world technologies. Several are of course unbuildable (at least for now). I do not hold the pretext that I am a skilled writer, I just hope I can stumble across something that at least a few people will enjoy reading.